Book Club For Men: Introduction

Gentlemen!  It’s good to see you here tonight for Curmudgeon Compound’s first ever Book Club for Men.  I’m Adaptive Curmudgeon and I decided to host this book club because I felt women were having all the fun with book clubs.  While there’s no law about book clubs being exclusively for women they all seem to be highly feminine. Despite press releases indicating the contrary, us men are not inherently illiterate.  Therefore we need an outlet for our literary explorations as much as anyone.  This will be an exclusively masculine book club.  However, and all men who aren’t jackoffs will understand when I say this, women are both welcome and encouraged to attend.

I hope this will be a friendly atmosphere, feel free to grab a beer from the fridge in the garage; you can call me Adaptive.

First some ground rules.  This is not a democracy.  We’re not going to vote on the books.  In keeping with male culture and longstanding tradition, I get to pick the books because I’ve supplied the beer.

Second, if you don’t read the book you can bugger off.  Go sit at the kid’s table where you belong.

Third, the books are ones I like.  Therefore there will be no weepy horseshit; no “one legged lesbian poet limps out of Argentina to become a nun in inner city Chicago”, no sparkly vampires, no recipes included in the footnotes, no stories about women forced to choose between the bad boy that makes her heart throb and the sack of dull to whom she’s married, no long bouts against cancer, etcetera.  Instead there will be good versus evil, death, destruction, wild animals, misery, overcoming misery, and freedom.  Also there will be explosions and most fictional hot women will know how to use weapons.  (Pause to let cheering die down.)

Finally this is a experiential book club.  We will not sit around discussing the book while sipping tea.  We will prove that we have learned from and embraced the book by engaging in an activity that displays the spirit of the book.  Good books have plenty of spirit so an experiential book club is a serious challenge.  It will be expensive and some of you will die.  If you’re not ready for that you’re welcome to leave now.  (Hey Fred!  You can leave but you can’t take the pizza dumbass!  What a wanker!)

Ok everyone else has stayed put.  I’m a little surprised that nobody else copped out.  (Hey!  He took a pizza.  Damnit someone go beat Fred senseless and get the pizza back.  Wait! Wait!  Only a couple of you should go.  I don’t need any more fatalities in the yard… though I like your spirit!)  Anyway I’ve selected a list of fifteen books which we will experientially examine on a monthly basis.  We will take a year and a half to do this.

You’ll need to be prepared so you have one month to acquire the following:

• A passport.
• Firearms.
• Several thousand dollars.  (Many of the books will be cheap or free but you’ll need the money for ammunition, air travel, medical emergencies, and potentially bail.)
• A fresh change of clothes would be wise.
• Also a warm coat and whatever you have in your bug out bag.

I see several of you nodding.  What’s this?  Most of you have all that on your person right now?  Excellent!  Stay tuned for the Book Club For Men syllabus…